Re: "Nature causes differences in the environment of the animal life in any particular location. For some of the species, they must adapt to the changes or perish."
Er... they don't 'choose' to 'adapt' or not. Nothing they 'choose' to do (unless it is the choice of whether to have offspring or not...) affects classical evolution at all.
Mutations are expressed in the germ plasm, or they are not. If no mutation is inheritable (thus: altered the germ plasm without killing the host, and was capable of being, and indeed WAS passed on to progeny) then there is no effect upon evolution.
My point is that physical changes can (& often do) affect individuals... but unless they alter the individual's germ plasm in an inheritable way... and are then passed on to subsequent generations, they will have no impact upon evolution, by definition.
(That is why it is commonly --- yet truthfully --- joked that 'evolution does not care about you once you are past child-bearing age'... because no matter what happens to you at that point as an individual, it will have no impact upon the genetic inheritance of the species....)
"There is not just one element in the force of nature. Droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, sudden freezing weather, loss of habitat by the demise of the usual plant life, or prey, forest fires, etc."
True. But my point was that 'evolution' doesn't 'care' about ANY of this --- except insofar as actions in the world affect germ plasm --- the DNA. One example (given above) is mutation to an individual's germ plasm that is then passed on to subsequent generations (affecting their genetic make-up for 'good' or 'ill', altering their survival characteristics).
Another example, which could ALSO possibly affect the genetic inheritance of a species, would be great disasters, mass extinctions, mass murder, etc., anything that *removed* numerous individuals of breeding age from the breeding pool, or dispersed them. Again by definition, the removal of their genetic inheritance from the 'gene pool' of the species could affect the species' evolution (for better, or for worse). One common example of this type of change is known as the 'island effect' --- individuals stranded on an island (thus separated from the wider gene pool of their species) are more likely to have mutations accumulate in their line, eventually producing a speciation effect.
"The "parlor trick" of a human cutting the tail off an animal is not an act, or force, of nature. Such is the stupidity of human, as usual."
My point was that --- whether a dog, or a mouse, or a cat, or whatever, loses a tail or an eye, etc. due to a 'natural' event (an accident), or due to man's intervention, in NEITHER case is it an INHERITABLE GENETIC CHANGE.
Thus, it can have no effect upon evolution.... Soviet biological science was *greatly* set back at in the early years of the 20th. Century because of Stalin's fondness for this silly concept. |
